"Our economy has gotten out of the slow, steady growth phase," said Marc Chaikin of Chaikin Analytics, who believes that the stock market will continue to rise into the year's end as money managers realize their holdings have underperformed benchmarks.

"There's no other place for large pools of capital than the U.S. market," he said.

"It's all about the economic data, which continues to show growth," he said.

In the morning, the ISM services index beat expectations with a leap to a three-month high of 59.3 for November. Before the open, ADP report on private payrolls showed sector employment is keeping up its recent pace in November, although the 208,000 new jobs was a shade below expectations.

U.S. nonfarm productivity grew a bit faster than initially thought in the third quarter, while sharp downward revisions to compensation pointed to muted wage inflation that should give the Federal Reserve room to keep interest rates low for a while.

The European Central Bank is expected to discuss monetary policy on Thursday.

There's "not a lot of market movement today," said Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab. "They're kind of just sitting back to see if we get any kind of stimulus from Mario Draghi."

Crude oil futures for January delivery settled up 50 cents at $67.38 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gold futures for February closed up $9.30 to $1,208.70 an ounce.

"I think it would be better for the market if we found a floor around these levels and I'm optimistic we will," Dan Veru, chief investment officer at Palisade Capital Management, said about oil prices.